MUSIC PREVIEW: Lee Brice aims for the next level

Country artist Lee Brice hopes his current hit, “I Don't Dance,” will be the song to advance his career.

By R. Scott ReedyFor The Patriot Ledger

Country artist Lee Brice wrote his current hit, “I Don’t Dance,” the first single off his forth coming album, as a wedding gift for his wife, Sara, whom he married April 21, 2013.

The ballad also turned out to be something special for the singer-songwriter, who plays the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset on Saturday and who joins Luke Bryan on his “That’s My Kind of Night Tour” at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro on Sunday.

“It’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It was for my wife for our first dance at our wedding. It wasn’t even supposed to be on the record. It wasn’t about that. It was just for Sara. I didn’t write it for a commercial purpose, but I came to realize that it had to be shared,” explained Brice by telephone last week. “I write a lot of songs, but there are just a few that I get a feeling about. And I had a major feeling about this one. I told my co-writers, Rob Hatch and Dallas Davidson, ‘Boys, this is the one. This is the one that’s going to show people who we really are and step us up to the next level, hopefully.’”

Brice was right – the song debuted at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot Country chart. A music video blending footage of Brice performing the song at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium with clips from his own wedding video followed. That meant getting permission from his wife.

“Sara didn’t mind, because she knows that I want to make music that will last forever and that means sharing it with the world,” Brice says of the tune that has already become a wedding song for other young couples, including Boston Marathon bombing survivors Rebekah Gregory and Pete DiMartino, who were married in Asheville, N.C., on April 4.

The album is set for release on Sept. 9 on Curb Records. The new song isn’t Brice’s only one with a local connection. The single “I Drive Your Truck,” written by Jessi Alexander, Connie Harrington, and Jimmy Yeary, was inspired by Gold Star father Paul Monti of Brockton, whose son, Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti, a posthumous Medal of Honor recipient, was killed in Afghanistan in 2006 while trying to save another soldier. The song hit number one on Billboard’s Country Airplay charts and was named the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year. It was the third release from Brice’s second album, 2012’s “Hard 2 Love,” which also produced number ones with not only the title song, but also his first number one, “A Woman Like You.” A South Carolina native who attended Clemson University on football scholarship, Brice has also helped other artists top the charts. He has written songs for Jason Aldean and Tim McGraw and, along with Billy Montana and Kyle Jacobs, he co-wrote the 2007 Garth Brooks hit “More Than a Memory,” which became the first single in the history of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart to debut at number one.

“It is very different from having your own hit, of course, but you feel very honored when someone else has a big hit with a song you’ve written. I didn’t write my first number one, so I know the experience from both sides,” says the 35-year-old, who now calls Nashville home. “I thought I would keep ‘More Than a Memory’ for myself but when Garth Brooks called, that changed. Most of the writing I do now is for me, but if I get done with a record then I may still pitch to other people. I had success as a writer before I had success as an artist so sometimes there’s a misconception that I was a songwriter first and then started to sing my own songs later. But all along, I’ve really always been writing for myself. When I wrote my first songs at 10 years old, it was because I wanted to sing them, and when I came to Nashville, I came to be a songwriter and a singer. It’s all one thing to me.”